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Is Jungian psychology scientific?

At uni today we had a careers advisor come in and give us undergrads. all a lecture about volunteering, gaining work experience and finding the right career for you. (This replaced what would have been a morning working in the lab) The main focus of the advice? Finding out what career would be best for you by taking some Jungian psyc. test to pin down your personality type and then basing your ambitions off that.

Our prof. told us that if she had taken this test earlier then maybe she wouldn't have "wasted" as much time and found the right career quicker. You might be wondering what she wasted this time on? Well apparently she considers getting a Marine Biology degree a waste and doing research on cancer while working for a Biotech company a waste as well. All because of the Jung test.

You think that would be bad enough but no! We actually have to do this Jungian test and write a "reflective piece on it for our portfolio of work (This is supposed to be for a Biology degree!)

As you can tell, I'm sceptical of Jungian psychology. The personality type test to me seems like nothing deeper than cold reading and I can't see how the careers it suggests for you at the end are any more of a profound analysis of one's mind than google working out what videos to suggest to you on Youtube.

So my question is: Is Jungian psychology of any scientific merit? Or is it, as I suspect, pseudoscience?

[Thanks for reading through my rant! :) ]

Tags: advice, careers, freud, jung, personality, pseudoscience, psychology, scientific, test, type

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Terence Meaden on October 31, 2012 at 5:24pm

Yep, surely quasi/pseudo-science. The career advice she received looks to have been pretty useless--although it did give her a job of sorts.

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Permalink Reply by Steph S. on October 31, 2012 at 5:53pm

Good discussion. Well your advisor doesn't sound like she knows what she is doing. Just follow the career path you want.

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Permalink Reply by Beth KZ on October 31, 2012 at 7:32pm

It's pseudoscience, based on "archetypes" which are basically the same thing as gods just without the divinity attached.

The test results are probably only slightly more valid for you than reading your horoscope in the newspaper. Slightly, because they do get some things - like whether you're introverted or extroverted, or you "think" with your head or your heart. But, most people can tell you where they stand on those things!

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Permalink Reply by Reeve on October 31, 2012 at 8:43pm

We were also told that lots of businesses use these types of tests on potential employees - which is somewhat disturbing.

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Permalink Reply by Beth KZ on October 31, 2012 at 8:57pm

I was in a company that gave them to existing employees so they would "better" know how to interact as a group with individual strengths and weaknesses.

We found out that the supervisor did pretty well on making contacts with people and getting them to "like" him or whatever he tried to "sell" them on. We found out that I was a good "idea person". We found out that I have trouble deciding which of those ideas is "the best", and we found out that the supervisor would find something good and bad about everything. We found out that one person would note the problems in any idea, but couldn't decide which of them was better or worse. We had somebody who would quickly make a decision.

Yeah... and... we already knew that. We'd have long meetings discussing the pros and cons. But, making any decision is better than none, so we'd have the one who would make decisions decide... SOMETHING.

We could have spent those 2 half-days working on something rather than taking those tests where I had to tell it whether or not I like shrubbery, and what all of this means.

No wonder the company went broke and was bought out!

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Permalink Reply by lucas ferguson on November 9, 2012 at 1:19pm

I don't know specifically about Jungian psychology, but I would say that a personality or aptitude test could be very useful for deciding your future career.

People tend to enjoy doing what they are good at, so if you are good at fixing things, mechanic is probably a better choice than car salesman. If you enjoy being creative and relating to people, maybe marketing is the career for you.

While researching cancer cures is a worthy goal, maybe a person who gets more fulfillment and satisfaction by imparting knowledge to the next generation should be teaching instead.

Another consideration is that a lot of people don't know what career they want, even after they have completed a college degree in something. There are also lots of jobs and careers that people don't consider because they don't know about them.

The test you talk about could be useful to widen peoples' horizons, but at best it would be a suggestion.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Hungerford on November 18, 2012 at 2:07am

Both Freud and Jung were full of sh** to their eyebrows.

Not any where near all of us (unfortunately, there are a few) are sickoids running around with the hots for our mommies or our daddies, and dreams are nothing more than our mammalian brains organizing the day's input.

I have yet to run on to one of those psych types who wouldn't admit this when pressed.

But then o' 'course, they always want to try to qualify that admission with: 'But they laid the foundation."

Meh...